Friday, 14 January 2005 - 4:00 PM

This presentation is part of: Evaluating Child Welfare Intensive Services: Results from California's Title IV-E Waiver Child Welfare Demonstration Project

How Does Providing a Family Group Conference Affect the Costs of a Voluntary Family Maintenance Program?

As part of the Waiver study, a cost study was performed for the Family Group Decision-Making component. The study sample consisted of 62 families, 38 experimental group families and 24 control group families, who were enrolled in the project’s voluntary family maintenance program after May 1, 2000, and who had terminated program services by September 30, 2003. Families were randomly assigned to the experimental or control group on a 3:2 ratio. Both groups of families received expedited access to services such as substance abuse treatment and mental health treatment; experimental group families additionally received a family group conference and had access to “flexible” funds which could be used to pay for non-traditional services and items such as car repairs, pest control services, or baby supplies. Costs tracked included the cost of providing the family group conference for experimental families, items paid for directly by child welfare such as “flexibly funded” items, child care, and respite care; services such as counseling, substance abuse treatment, and parenting classes, whether provided in-house or by community providers; and the value of workers’ time to supervise cases. Experimental group families were less likely to refuse all services than control group families. Experimental group families on average incurred greater costs for individual therapy for children, while control group families incurred greater costs for outpatient substance abuse treatment. Overall, experimental group families incurred an average of $4,285 per family in total costs for the program, while control group families incurred an average of $5,099 in total costs. While this last observation was not statistically significant, it does suggest that despite providing experimental group families a family group conference and expending flexible funds to provide non-traditional items and services for them, their overall service costs were not greater than those for control group families. The most important predictors of overall costs observed were the receipt of at least one substance abuse treatment service and the receipt of at least one mental health service. The findings appear to indicate that including a family group conference and the flexible use of funds in a program to prevent placement of children in foster care does not increase the overall cost of services for families.

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